Silly Question

mikemansker · January 13, 2017

I know I have way too much time on my hands to be thinking about this:

You can buy open pollinated or hybrid tomato seeds.

I think that if you grow the OP variety and save seeds and plant them the next year, you are going to get a tomato with the same traits as the parent.

When you plant hybrid seeds, you get the tomatoes represented by the hybrid, bearing the characteristics of the parent tomatoes used to create the hybrid and, if you save seed from the resulting tomatoes, they do not produce true replicas of the hybrid planted. This brings me to my silly question.

I assume that a hybrid like Big Beef is grown in great quantities throughout the country, or you could substitute any other popular hybrid you want. Where do all of those hybrid seeds come from? Growers can't be saving seeds from the hybrid, so they must be crossing the parents every year to get the seeds. Right?

I see terms like F1, etc. which seem to represent the first growing, F2 would represent a second season of growing? If this is the case, when you get to F26 or whatever and keep getting the tomato you want (stable), wouldn't the tomato cease to be a hybrid and become an OP?

Just my ramblings. Please set me straight.

January 13, 2017	#1
mikemansker Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Feb 2013 Location: Branson MO Posts: 441	Silly Question I know I have way too much time on my hands to be thinking about this: You can buy open pollinated or hybrid tomato seeds. I think that if you grow the OP variety and save seeds and plant them the next year, you are going to get a tomato with the same traits as the parent. When you plant hybrid seeds, you get the tomatoes represented by the hybrid, bearing the characteristics of the parent tomatoes used to create the hybrid and, if you save seed from the resulting tomatoes, they do not produce true replicas of the hybrid planted. This brings me to my silly question. I assume that a hybrid like Big Beef is grown in great quantities throughout the country, or you could substitute any other popular hybrid you want. Where do all of those hybrid seeds come from? Growers can't be saving seeds from the hybrid, so they must be crossing the parents every year to get the seeds. Right? I see terms like F1, etc. which seem to represent the first growing, F2 would represent a second season of growing? If this is the case, when you get to F26 or whatever and keep getting the tomato you want (stable), wouldn't the tomato cease to be a hybrid and become an OP? Just my ramblings. Please set me straight.